Miss Marley had a singularly beautiful speaking voice; it was as soft as velvet. She dropped it half a tone, and said suddenly:
"Look here, don't do that kind of thing again. It's foolish. People don't always get killed, you know; sometimes they get maimed. Forgive me, but I thought I would just like to point it out to you. I could not bear to see a strong man maimed."
Winn knew that it was silly and weak to like her just because of the tone of her voice, but he found himself liking her. He had a vague desire to tell her that he wouldn't do it again and that he had been rather a fool; but the snow was behaving in a queer way all around him; it appeared to be heaving itself up. He said instead:
"Excuse me for sitting down like this. I've had a bit of a shake. I'll be all right in a moment or two." Then he fainted.
Miss Marley stooped over him, opened his collar, laid him flat on the ground—he had fallen in a heap on his toboggan—and chafed his wrists and forehead with snow. When she saw that he was coming round, she moved a little away from him and studied his toboggan.
"If I were you," she observed, "I should have these runners cut a little finer; they are just a shade too thick."
Winn dragged himself on to the toboggan and wondered how his collar came to be undone. When he did it up, he found his hands were shaking, which amazed him very much. He looked a little suspiciously at his companion.
"Of course," Miss Marley continued pleasantly, "I ought to have that watchman discharged. I am a member of the Cresta committee, and he behaved scandalously; but I dare say you forced him into it, so I shall just walk up the hill and give him a few straight words. Probably you don't know the dialect. I've made a point of studying it. If I were you, I should stay where you are until I come back. I want you to come to tea with me at Cresta. There's a particularly good kind of bun in the village, and I think I can give you some rather useful tobogganing tips. It isn't worth while your climbing up the hill just to climb down again, is it? Besides, you'd probably frighten the man."
"Thanks," said Winn. "All right; I'll stay." He didn't want the Cresta bun, and he thought that he resented Miss Marley's invitation; but, on the other hand, he was intensely glad she was going off and leaving him alone.
He felt uncommonly queer. Perhaps he could think of some excuse to avoid the tea when she came back.